USS Copernicus, NCC-640 or 623?

Indeed. I'd like to start believing in "USS Tsiolkovsky, NCC-640" from now on, then, when it's evident that the five-digit registry number is invisible in most of the redone scenes - even in the dedication plaque shots, which remain off focus and completely unreadable save for the ship's name (mis)spelled in Cyrillics.

Indeed. I'd like to start believing in "USS Tsiolkovsky, NCC-640" from now on...

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And I'd like to start believing that as well. Unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that because of the original disconnect between the Art Department (Okuda, who presumably created the plaque thinking the Tsiolkovsky was going to be a new ship) and the VFX department (who used the Grissom/Copernicus model and re-registered it according to what a 23rd century ship of that class would have logically been labeled), most future Oberths seen in TNG now sported 5XXXX registries and were essentially in continuous production for at least 80 years, when that was not the original intention.

most future Oberths seen in TNG now sported 5XXXX registries and were essentially in continuous production for at least 80 years, when that was not the original intention.

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I wouldn't say continuous production. I think those later ships were simply later "batches". It might have been decades between batches of ships like Oberths who generally served in lower risk missions that didn't stress their capabilities all that much.

^While I agree in principle with the batch theory (which explains things like the gap in time between the prototypes of such ships as the Excelsior and Ambassador classes and the mass-production of said classes if we take registry numbers into account), I just can't accept this with the Oberth.

The Grissom was operating in 2285. The class ship Oberth NCC-602 must have been built even before this. The Pegasus was commissioned in 2358, and the Tsiolkovsky was commissioned in 2363. That's 73 years at the least between these two batches, and more than 78 years at the most. Whether there were other batches between these times or not is irrelevant: Why would an old outdated design suddenly get a resurgence of newbuilds 75+ years after its introduction, when newer, more advanced designs were being manufactured at the same time? That's like the Ford Motor Company all of a sudden deciding to build Model-T's along with their new Mustangs, Focuses, and F-150s.

No, but it could've easily passed for a new design, and the Klingon battlecruiser from ENT did retain an identical exterior in the VOY era. The producers' requirement to keep Star Trek mostly the same, as well as some budget constraints here and there, simply resulted in a similar sort of "technological stasis" that is used to explain why the Star Wars galaxy had very similar technology 25,000 years ago. Yes, there is some new technology in Star Trek, but nothing radically new. As a result, Starfleet may view starship exteriors as a set of architectural shapes, some of them repeated by tradition over generations, rather than designs driven strictly by functional requirements. The interior can change, but the exterior doesn't matter as much.

The Heart of Gold, a starship mentioned in a LCARS display in "Conspiracy", has a registry of NCC-42. If registries are chronological, this starship would have to be commissioned in the mid-21st century. However, another starship from the same episode torpedoes that hypothesis. The Tycho has the highest known canonical number with NCC-85103, and this starship was active in 2364. Up to now, I, and I think a few others, thought a starship with that registry would appear after Nemesis. Nope, there it is in 2364. It's Entente all over again. Sometimes I wish that we didn't know about the starships from "Conspiracy" for they confuse matters more. I don't know how to explain the HoG.

The Heart of Gold, a starship mentioned in a LCARS display in "Conspiracy", has a registry of NCC-42. If registries are chronological, this starship would have to be commissioned in the mid-21st century. ... I don't know how to explain the HoG.

No, but it could've easily passed for a new design, and the Klingon battlecruiser from ENT did retain an identical exterior in the VOY era. The producers' requirement to keep Star Trek mostly the same, as well as some budget constraints here and there, simply resulted in a similar sort of "technological stasis" that is used to explain why the Star Wars galaxy had very similar technology 25,000 years ago. Yes, there is some new technology in Star Trek, but nothing radically new. As a result, Starfleet may view starship exteriors as a set of architectural shapes, some of them repeated by tradition over generations, rather than designs driven strictly by functional requirements. The interior can change, but the exterior doesn't matter as much.

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While I understand what you're getting at here, the fact of the matter is that old models were reused because of budget and time constraints, not because of some in-universe explanation that Trek is in technological stasis, even right down to the TMP bridge chair design used on a ship that was apparently built almost a century after TMP. I appreciate your attempt, as a fan, to try to explain these discrepancies, but this fan just thinks it's utter bullshit.

The Heart of Gold, a starship mentioned in a LCARS display in "Conspiracy", has a registry of NCC-42. If registries are chronological, this starship would have to be commissioned in the mid-21st century. However, another starship from the same episode torpedoes that hypothesis. The Tycho has the highest known canonical number with NCC-85103, and this starship was active in 2364. Up to now, I, and I think a few others, thought a starship with that registry would appear after Nemesis. Nope, there it is in 2364. It's Entente all over again. Sometimes I wish that we didn't know about the starships from "Conspiracy" for they confuse matters more. I don't know how to explain the HoG.

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1. Actually, the earliest the Heart of Gold could have been commissioned is 2161, after the founding of the Federation, which would be the mid-to-late 22nd century.

2. If you have the registry info for all the Conspiracy ships, I'd like to know them too, especially if you have screencaps.

3. One can't explain things like this, because they were not meant to be taken seriously. They're humorous entries that will be added into my shiplist for completeness, but other than that I'm not going to lose any sleep over them. No, I don't believe Starfleet really has a ship called the Elmer Fudd; I don't think a ship from the founding of the Federation is still operating in the TNG era; and I don't think the Tycho's registry is really as high as what appears on that computer screen. They're all in-jokes and should be treated as such.

But where do you personally draw the analytical line? The Wolf 359 ships and the Frankenstein fleet were meant to be regular 23rd or 24th century designs, and they would've been if the needed budget was there along with the requirement to show them up-close. To what extent do you think they look like the models on the available photos? NCC-42 is an injoke, yes, but in a way so is the highly visible NCC-1941 from "Cause and Effect" (TNG), not to mention NCC-0514 for the likewise visible Kelvin and a few other numbers from the background STXI ships. The Elmer Fudd is extremely unlikely because that name is highly inconsistent with Starfleet nomenclature, but NCC-42... Depends. Maybe it's an old ship that has seen some upgrades and is restricted to very specific missions.

That's a good question, deserving of a good, simple answer (with explanations). Basically, whatever things were meant to be taken seriously, should be. And whatever was not, should not. I'll use your examples:

1. The Wolf 359 ships: These should be taken seriously. The TNG producers contracted out a professional modelmaker (Ed Miarecki) to design and build six new starship classes. They could have easily just thrown together a bunch of model kits themselves, but they didn't. Okuda even went so far as to assign names, registry numbers, and class designations for these ships, and added their info in the Encyclopedia. The resulting designs (and the two ships Greg Jein built) are 100% realistic.

2. The Frankenstein fleet: These should NOT be taken seriously. In complete opposition to the Wolf 359 ships, these models were simply rushed bash jobs that in many cases make no logical sense the way they were built. They were not made by professionals, they were not given class designations, and the ones that did have names and numbers were given them by whoever slapped them together, not someone official like Okuda or Sternbach. Yes, some of them were seen on screen, but YMMV as to how much one should actually take them seriously.

3. USS Kelvin NCC-0514: Name is Abrams's granddad, and number is allegedly his birth date. This is an homage, not an in-joke, and because the number fits the time period, there's no problem. The Kelvin kitbashes were the same deal.

4. USS Bozeman NCC-1941: The registry is not a joke; again, it's an homage to something. Because the number happens to fit the age of the ship, like the Kelvin there's no problem with taking it seriously.

5. Elmer Fudd, NCC-42 et. al from Conspiracy: No one at the time would have ever guessed that this info would ever be readable, or that Trek fans would obsess over this info to the extent we do here. A lot of the info was just random jokes, and was thrown together very quickly, spelling errors and all. Nothing in it should be taken seriously. As I said before, once we get all the info, it's going in my shiplist for completeness' sake, but other than that, it's meaningless to me because it was meaningless to the people who made it up.

For the release of TNG on blue-ray, Mr. Okuda corrected okudagrams from the episode "The Naked Now" (refit Enterprise to TOS Enterprise) and "The Neutral Zone" (Clare Raymond's family tree). For me, the latter is telling. In the original showing, the family tree was peppered with in-jokes (Dr. Who characters, Muppets characters). If he could change the family tree, he could have change the mission orders. He didn't. Why?

For the release of TNG on blue-ray, Mr. Okuda corrected okudagrams from the episode "The Naked Now" (refit Enterprise to TOS Enterprise) and "The Neutral Zone" (Clare Raymond's family tree). For me, the latter is telling. In the original showing, the family tree was peppered with in-jokes (Dr. Who characters, Muppets characters). If he could change the family tree, he could have change the mission orders. He didn't. Why?

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Probably because he knew Raymond's family tree would be large enough to be completely legible in HD, and on the screen for quite a while, while the Conspiracy info was much smaller, not as legible, and lasted less than a second before changing to different screens. Plus, there would have been way more screens of info to change, and very little time to do it. Cut the guy a break.

IMHO, I'm glad that the information wasn't changed in any way, because now I know what ship info was really printed on those screens back in 1988.

this thread just made my day as last week I just finished my study work for the Academy ("Is Oberth Class the missing design evolution link between USS Enterprise and USS Reliant?").

When I became aware that NCC-640 has been used for USS Tsiolkovsky (model) I thought "wow"!
Of the three fathers of rocket science we'd then have the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (640) in the same company as the German Hermann Oberth (602).
Of course, someone is missing: America's father of rocket science, i.e. Robert Goddard.

According to the (Matt) 'Jefferies Rule' this class of ships would be the 6th Federation design and the first serial number / ship would become the name for the class, thus there has to be an NCC-601 which I strongly believe would have been USS Goddard.

Yes, I'm aware of the problem that Goddard Class is somewhat not compatible with the Oberth Class designation seen on screens. Unfortunately! Maybe they can still CGI fix this for the upcoming Blu-rays?

Besides, "fathers and mothers of rocketry" is a theme that would have been used in spacecraft since time immemorial, meaning that the names on 23rd century starships would be "recycled" ones. Now, the Royal Navy is fond of recycling entire thematic collections of names (for each generation of ships, there's a County class, Town class, Tribal class, Castle class, River class and/or Quality class), but the USN tends to pick and choose: only heroic examples get immortalized by a reuse of name. Thus, a famous old carrier name originally thematically applied (battle site theme) may now be the name for a destroyer (for which there is no unifying theme). In contrast, insignificant ships like minehunters get thematic or alliterative names.

We have every reason to think that Starfleet picks and chooses as well: while lesser ship types may get thematic names (runabouts are River class), bigger ones seem to get famous names (so we e.g. witness US battle site = aircraft carrier names being distributed across multiple dissimilar classes, while none of these classes uses solely the names of US battle sites or carriers).

So USS Goddard may already be in "better" use by the time the Oberth class comes along. Certainly later Oberth names appear diverse, including e.g. freedom fighters who had nothing to do with astronautics or astronomy.